Gor SG Ocholla eyes FKF’s top job

Gor Mahia Football Club secretary Sam Ocholla has declared his interest in assuming the Football Kenya Federation (FKF) presidency.

Other candidate eyeing the top seat include former president Sam Nyamweya, Extreme Sports CEO Hussein Mohamed former FKF CEO Ludovick Aduda, Murang’a Seal FC chairman Robert Macharia, former footballer Harold Ndege and businessman Twaha Mbarak.

Nation Sport spoke to Ocholla and fielded questions prodding into his vision:

Q. What will be the priority areas in your administration's first 100 days?

A: The areas include developing football at the grassroots and nurturing of talent, improving the quality of our leagues including the women’s league and devolving football activities across the country by funding all the 48 branches of FKF.

I will return Kenya Premiere League Limited, make it professional and competent to handle our league.

In collaboration with the branches, I will focus on creating and supporting grassroots programmes that provide access to football for all children, regardless of gender or socio-economic background.

This will help identify and nurture young talent from an early age.

Q. What funding model would you prefer for your administration's success?

A:I will devolve funds to the counties to help in the growth of football. All the revenue the federation will get in my administration will be distributed to the branches to undertake approved activities and budget lines as proposed by them.

I have been going around campaigning in many branches, but I realise different areas have different priorities in terms of football development.

It’s on this pedestal that I will be giving funds depending on the needs analysis and proposals from the branches.

Q. What role can the national and county governments play in the development of football?

A: The national and county governments are key stakeholders in football development. I will strive get a better working relationship with them. Sports is a devolved function and the county governments will be approached in matters that touch on infrastructure development and activity sponsorship for clubs.

At the national level, we intend to seek government funding through the sports ministry to support football.

Working closely with the government, I will also seek to have a partnership with the ministry on the Talent Hela project and integrate it with FKF programmes to maximise to its intended goal(s).

Q. How will you and your administration's officials eradicate corruption in Kenyan football?

A:The biggest way is the devolution way. Every county will present a budget that will be considered and approved by the federation every year.
Money will be disbursed to the devolved units purely for activities budgeted for.This way, it will be easy to track usage of money, and where misappropriation is spotted, the law will take its course.
At the moment, all the revenue is centralised at the federation and it’s not known how it’s used.

This is deliberate to ensure information is not served to the stakeholders as corruption eats deep in to our football!

My office will work closely with the umbrella referees’ body KEFRA (Kenya Football Referees Association) to ensure they are paid adequately for them to stem match – fixing.
Kenya referees are a frustrated lot who can’t deliver professionally in the field due to non – payment, a problem that fuels match – fixing and corruption in the game.

Another area that propagates match – fixing is the poor pay, or non – payment of players by clubs.

In my discussion with the players’ welfare body recently, we agreed that we shall talk to clubs to ensure they don’t pay players below minimum wage as stipulated under Kenya labor laws.
If we manage this, match– fixing will be something of the past since it’s the players and referees who collude, or separately enable match – fixing.

We shall also consider a legislation on match-fixing since there is no law currently that deals with this vice in football, making it just a moral matter more than legal

Q.What structures do you propose to help in the smooth and consistent development of talent?

A. Because there will be funds at the grassroots, counties will be challenged to have football competitions of all Fifa recommended age groups up to adult level in their respective areas.

There is talent in our country and using the best talent acquisition and development methods, we shall ensure as a federation that we nature that talent to build Kenyan soccer to help us achieve our dream of playing in the world cup 2030.

To do this, we shall start by collaborating with schools and local communities. Country federations shall collaborate with schools and local communities to promote youth football.

This will include organising inter-school tournaments, providing coaching clinics, and engaging with parents and teachers to raise awareness about the benefits of participating in football.

Country federations to establish talent identification programs to identify promising young players. Once identified, these players can be provided with specialized training and development opportunities to further enhance their skills.

Q. The women's game holds so much promise, yet it is underfunded and largely ignored. What remedies do you have for this scenario?

A: Fifa has an elaborate programme for women football and countries have been benefiting out of it. Unfortunately, our federation has not fully tapped in to this advantage for reasons best known to them.

I will ensure that we request Fifa for funds in order to direct it at women’s football development, and to ensure proper accountability of the same.

As exhibited by current form of Harambee Starlets in the recent international assignments, ladies’ football has great potential. I will ensure we support its growth.

Q. What have you achieved at club level that motivates you to take up federation leadership?

A. Streamlining of the leadership around the Technical Bench and the dismantling of the cartel networking systems alongside streamlining of the team recruitment activities and wage bill management.

Now we have a group of foreign and local based players whose wage bill is manageable.
The restructuring of the youth team to a Youth Sports Academy is ongoing. I also employed stakeholder management, brought tranquility in the playing unit, technical bench and executive committee, and with other stakeholders.

I reduced the monstrous pile of debts for ex-players to a near zero, a debt that almost brought this mighty club to its knees.

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